My First Design...

Depends how much you want to experiment.. if a pizza box will fly, I guess most things will work if it looks like any kind of airplane... I know people who have taken mismatched fuse, tail, wing, and cobbled them together (parts from previous 'mishaps') to make a plane that flew quite nicely...... all you need are the basics..

az21 .

On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 22:11:03 GMT, Steve wrote in :

I don't know of an all-in-one site.

I've collected lots of articles on design from magazines.

I'm maybe 1/3 of the way through designing and building a utility/trainer/sport plane. The fuselage is framed up and very partly planked; the empennage is done; the wing cores are cut. Still a long way to go, however. I want to fiberglass it and paint it with latex.

My theory is to use features from other kits that I've built and/or flown and liked. I'm more or less vamping off a plane I crashed (a Road Runner), except I'm using foam-core empennage, a foam wing, and an airfoil that I picked out of an airfoil drawing program (Profili).

The landing gear is the same.

Marty

You'd do well to read The Basics of Model Aircraft Design by Andy Lennon, available through Model Airplane News, or possible at your local library. It gives a good basic understanding of model aerodynamics and design criteria. However, just copying the basic moments and areas of an existing successful design, but playing with shapes can provide you with a highly individualistic looking plane that's pretty sure to fly decently.

Hi,

Got one on order, thanks for the pointer.

Good point too. My first design is pretty basic, a low-wing, inverted Gull wing to be exact ala an F4U- Corsair, so I'm building and flying a GWS Corsair as my next model so I can see how that type of wing flies.

One of my questions (hopefully answered in the book) is the tail section. How big (compared to the wing), how much vertical tail, and rudder response (travel) will I need etc.

The other big question, is that the fuselage itself is somewhat airfoil shaped, so I'm trying to determine how much that contributes to the lift vector. Should I consider it another wing section and work things out, or am I over complicating things just a bit?

Thanks for any and all input. Steve

Hi,

Yeah, been working through that site a lot, but to be honest, it's so full of stuff, it gets to be daunting at times.

Thanks Steve

On Thu, 24 Aug 2006 18:06:25 GMT, Steve wrote in :

You can answer that question by building a small balsa glider that is a scale model of your design.

Set the glider's CG for just the wing only. If that doesn't seem to work well, then it may be an indicator that the fuselage is, in fact, contributing lift as well.

Marty

Good idea Marty!

Steve

Interesting! I'm building a little electric sport model with an inverted gull wing too! It's based on the Supermarine 224, not the Corsair. BTW, the 224 was the first "Spitfire," but the one we all know by that name was Supermarine's type 300. The 224 was a dog, but kinda neat looking from some angles.

"Scale effect" is the term that deals with the tail's area compared to the wing area between the full sized airplane and a model of it. Generally models need a bit more tail surface for proper control. You'll also find that a very slab-sided fuselage (hence more surface area) needs less vertical stabiliser, and flys knife edges better, since the fuselage does act as a lifting surface when on its side.

Marty's suggestion is right on! An aeronautical engineer told me the same. Since they do it at NASA, we may as well do it too! :-)

Maybe not, but I saw and heard my share of F-104s at Luke AFB in AZ between

Ed Cregger

He was one of the first Air Force pilots to be assigned to the "missle with a man" 104's at Lockeed. I swear that he know more about how that aircraft would fly then the engineers. His favorite take off pattern was to start his roll from the end of the runway lift up about 20 feet, clean the plane up then go verticle to 60 angels at about the 2000 ft marker (opposite end of runway). Yes the 104's had a distinct sound to them and Major Brothers had a unique way of handling the throttle so you could always tell it was him that was taxing out to the runway. If someone would have made a bet on how long you could keep the nose of a 104 up during landing I would have lost the bet. Major Brothers brought one in with the nose wheel up he touched down (gingerly) and kept the nose of the plane up almost the entire runway. One of the maintenance men told me that the only damage was to the nose wheel door when it scraped the runway!

Roy

An interesting Skunkworks project used the F-104 as the base design of the glider-winged U2. Bill(oc)

Also used a modified B57 at Eglin AFB wings were about 60% longer then a normal B57. At the time didn't know why they had done this until the pictures for the U2 came out!

Roy